Party.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. -Frederick Beuchner

I woke up this morning before my alarm when off, well before dawn and as I laid in bed I realized that I’ve never really believed that, I swing between two extremes of belief that I don’t matter at all, wondering why I exists and berating myself for not fixing everything because I feel like every world problem is riding on my shoulders.

Life is a party and it wouldn’t have been complete without me….

Thanks to my Rabbit Room people…I think I’m starting to believe it.

I am here for a brief moment in this swiftly moving continuum we call time. Why? Because, the world needs my perspective, my laughter, my smile, my eyes, my tears, my hands, my feet, my quirks, my words, my heart…me. Because if it didn’t, I wouldn’t have been written, spoken, and breathed into being, I wouldn’t be here.

To much has been out to thwart my arrival for this to all be an accident.

Fact: I am wanted. I am needed. Proof? I am here. Out of a trillion different possibilities, I am here. I stand, I stretch, I move, I breathe, and what is my job? To be faithful with what is in front of my face. To love those that are put in my path, to search for those forgotten people on the margins of life, and to tell all the story of scandalous grace. I am not the savior of the world, I am a tiny piece of the puzzle that is tells an epic story, mind you a dark tiny broken piece, but nonetheless the picture wouldn’t be complete without me.

And here’s the thing, the exact same thing—is true about you.

You are here. You were written into the story, you were knit and woven together, you were spoken and breathed into being, because this crazy story wouldn’t be complete without you—you are wanted, you are loved.

You have hands and feet. You have eyes that see and you have quirks. You have laughter and smiles and tears. You have words and you have passions that light your fire. You are needed, for you are here, and the party wouldn’t have be complete without you.

Our paths crossed at some point and now we are in this together. We are needed, for we are here, and the party wouldn’t be complete without us.

Ready? Let’s do this.

When I Can't Sleep at Night

There once was a pretty wild flower who was buttoned up tight.
For she listened to voices that screamed in the night.
Voices that told her that she was too broken and bent to come close to the light
And that she was too dirty to ever be bright.

"You think you’re good enough to come closer?"
She heard over and over again.
"Who do you think you are? You’re a failure, you're a poser."

So she bolted the door and sealed herself in,
Just hoping they'd stop, she hid down deep in the dark.
And then the dragon wrapped round her with a snicker and grin.
Sneering at this tightly fastened little blossom, who was hiding her spark.

Then one day a soft wind carried a sound,
Filled to the brim with words that quieted those voices that hound.

Soft gentle words of a Gardener who said,
Don’t listen to your fear.
Ignore all those who sneer.
For it’s all a free gift,
This beauty and light.
You couldn’t ever earn it, not even if you used all your might.
Be yourself and open up wide.
For the very worst thing you could do is to hide.
Don't be scared I'm right by your side.

Show the world the beauty you see and you hold
Don’t shrivel up and conceal those petals of gold.
For all of that beauty is mine, not your own.

I’ve tripping over this picture for months and months, I’ve carried it around in my head, tucking it away, all but forgetting it’s existence and then something will make me think of it and I’ll stumble over it again.

I’ve wanted to capture how I feel about it, but my thoughts have hung like a stubborn water drop, refusing to let go, to let me flick it loose and capture it.

But now…I think I shall try nonetheless.

It’s the image of Oscar Pistorius, the man who had both of his legs amputated before he was even a year old, the man also known as The Blade Runner. It’s an image of him leaning down next to a little girl, a little girl also has blades for legs, they’re running, he’s smiling, and he’s letting her win.

It’s one of those wonderful images that stings your eyes, warms your heart, and restores your faith in humanity…until you learn that Oscar has been accused of premeditated murder of his girlfriend, shooting her, that he’s wrestled with anger problems his whole life, and then there’s the image of him, bending over, laughing and letting a little disabled girl win a race.

He hasn’t been convicted yet, but to me that’s besides the point.

Every time I think of that picture, it makes me ache.

What a stark contrast.

We watch videos online or strangers helping other people, giving their coats to a cold little boy, and we act as if humanity was something that was worth having faith in and then we look around at the world we live in, with suicide bombings, mass shootings, genocides and holocausts…and it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the two.

So we like to paint dark lines separating the two. We sanitize the heroes and we tarnish the villains.

We pretend that a person can be more or less than a person.

We like to do this with the Bible, we like to separate Moses from his mistrust, David from his affair, and both from their murders. We dissect Solomon from his concubines, Joseph from his arrogance, and Peter from his doubts.

We turn angrily and declare we don’t understand how people can do they horrible things that they do, and then we name a million horrible things that we wish would happen to them, revealing the darkness in our own hearts…

"There but for the grace of God go I…” sounds good when it slips from one’s lips—but do we understand the weight of those words? Do we realize how incredibly finite and helpless we are?

Had I been born to radical Muslims in the middle of a war zone, who would I be? Had I been given abusive parents instead of the loving ones I have...where would I be?

How dependent are we all?

Did we have anything to do with what DNA we were given or where we were born or who we were born to?

Let me take that serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine from your brain and let’s see how long you stay sane.

Let me zip of the childhood and genetic make up of another person on you and see if you do much better than they do.

This doesn’t excuse any amount of sin or ache, but may we…may I have humility and breath grace in all things.

There is a holocaust architect in each of us.

"Guilty of one, guilty of all."

Thank God for grace. Sweet, amazing grace.

Pride

Doing things because you want attention and not doing things because you’re worried that people will think you are wanting attention, are just different branches that come from the same root of pride.

Pretending you carry a light that doesn’t exist and covering up the light you have, both result in the same darkness.

It’s just one is more dangerous because it can easily be covered with a thin veil of false humility and you can feel like you are being a better person while you do it.

And that would be the one that I wrestle with the most…of course it would be…

I worry what people think about me, what kind of image am I projecting, what people think about me, and if I annoy people.

I’m worried what you think after you read that line.

The way I normally deal with this is I’m self deprecating, hand me a compliment and I’ll find a way to squish it and dismiss it--because I’m worried that it will go to my head or that people will think it's going to my head.

Ask me about me strengths and I’ll hand you a long alphabetized list of my faults.

I was talking to a lovely new friend yesterday and this topic came up. I asked a her, "How do you kill this type of pride?”

And she said, “I think you ask God to show you how to repent and you run in that direction.”

See…I write (copiously) and people tell me that I’m not horrible at it..and if I'm being honest they actually say I'm good at it. But I’m scared to own it, because I don’t want people to think I believe that I’m all that plus a bag of chips. I scared that people will dismiss me because they think that I write just because I’m an attention whore.

Maybe...repentance for me looks like owning the fact I've been given something I don't understand and that terrifies me. (I'm cringing on the inside as I write that)

But the end of the day…it doesn’t matter what people think or what my fears whisper to me. What matters is what the God who made me thinks…

I want to believe this so bad, I want this truth to sink down into my marrow and go pumping into my blood.

This is not for you, it is for me.

Life is such thin fragile thing, and most of the time I forget that. I act like what people think of me is going to matter for centuries instead of brief moments. I would do better to remember how incredibly transient and frail my little life is.

Life is too short to not be me. I have about sixty years left at most and I could even possibly have less than a day left.

So I want to do things and say things and actually live, even if that means risking people misunderstanding and not liking me, because the only way you avoid criticism is to do and be nothing.

And I’m so weary of hiding who I am because of a long list of silly fears.

My name is Ming,

And I am loved much more than I believe that I am and so are you. You see God, loves and likes us an awful lot way more than we think he does, not because we’re that cool or awesome but simply because he is that good. I want this to be my anthem.

I want to believe deep down in my core that grace changes people, I want to believe deep down that grace will change me. I am loved and I want it sink down, down, down into my bones until it becomes so much a part of me.

I want to believe that grace is big enough and wide enough for even me.

I am odd and I love Jesus. I like books and all the words they carry. I smell old books and I swoon. I am tall, a dreamer and an idealist. Trees make me want to dance and climb them, I've made friends with all the flavors of the wind, and I am a big fan of watermelon, cinnamon rolls, and laughter.

I am broken and worn and torn and bleeding.

I’m a commingling of darkness and light. I do wrong things and I do right things for wrong reasons. I pass buckets of grace around and then refuse to accept it myself because I don’t think I deserve it, because I know better. I am a firstborn and I beat myself up often.

I write but I only know how to write from the spaces between my ache.

I’m twenty plus three and in a handful of months I’ll change the three to a four. This means if I live to die at “old age” I have approximately 60ish years left on earth, and that’s assuming I don’t die from cancer or in a car wreck or fire or some freak accident involving man eating snails.

This means that most of the things I spend my time worrying about, honestly don’t matter, because at the end of the day I’ll either be laying in a pretty wood box with my face painted like a clown or encased a little ceramic jar as a small dusty pile of ashes.

This means that I can either use these moments I have left trying to be someone else, or I can be myself. God doesn’t call me to be an angel, He calls me to be His.

One day I will die. It won’t matter how much money I had or how smart I was or any of the million silly things we use to ascribe worth to people.

What will matter is how I lived, how I loved, and what the God who spoke me into being thinks of me.

And my Father is awfully fond of me. (grin)

Life.

This is not for you, it is for me.

Life is such thin fragile thing, and most of the time I forget that. I act like what people think of me is going to matter for centuries instead of brief moments. I would do better to remember how incredibly transient and frail my little life is.

Life is too short to not be me. I have about sixty years left at most and I could even possibly have less than a day left.

So I want to do things and say things and actually live, even if that means risking people misunderstanding and not liking me, because the only way you avoid criticism is to do and be nothing.

And I’m so weary of hiding who I am because of a long list of silly fears.

My name is Ming,

And I am loved much more than I believe that I am and so are you. You see God, loves and likes us an awful lot way more than we think he does, not because we’re that cool or awesome but simply because he is that good. I want this to be my anthem.

I want to believe deep down in my core that grace changes people, I want to believe deep down that grace will change me. I am loved and I want it sink down, down, down into my bones until it becomes so much a part of me.

I want to believe that grace is big enough and wide enough for even me.

I am odd and I love Jesus. I like books and all the words they carry. I smell old books and I swoon. I am tall, a dreamer and an idealist. Trees make me want to dance and climb them, I've made friends with all the flavors of the wind, and I am a big fan of watermelon, cinnamon rolls, and laughter.

I am broken and worn and torn and bleeding.

I’m a commingling of darkness and light. I do wrong things and I do right things for wrong reasons. I pass buckets of grace around and then refuse to accept it myself because I don’t think I deserve it, because I know better. I am a firstborn and I beat myself up often.

I write but I only know how to write from the spaces between my ache.

I’m twenty plus three and in a handful of months I’ll change the three to a four. This means if I live to die at “old age” I have approximately 60ish years left on earth, and that’s assuming I don’t die from cancer or in a car wreck or fire or some freak accident involving man eating snails.

This means that most of the things I spend my time worrying about, honestly don’t matter, because at the end of the day I’ll either be laying in a pretty wood box with my face painted like a clown or encased a little ceramic jar as a small dusty pile of ashes.

This means that I can either use these moments I have left trying to be someone else, or I can be myself. God doesn’t call me to be an angel, He calls me to be His.

One day I will die. It won’t matter how much money I had or how smart I was or any of the million silly things we use to ascribe worth to people.

What will matter is how I lived, how I loved, and what the God who spoke me into being thinks of me.

And my Father is awfully fond of me. (grin)

Grace.

Oh good, I’m glad you’re here.
I haven't slept in days.
I am beside myself.
Can’t you see these circles under my eyes?
And my hair is falling out in clumps!

Grace is getting out of hand...again. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on her—she laughs and spins out of my grasp, as if this was some sort of GAME.

See, I keep telling her she needs to hang out with Sacrifice, Hard Work, and Good Deeds, doing civilized things, but instead she keeps insisting on climbing out the window to run around with Mercy, Freedom, and Love—and I might add--they always seem to be hanging out with the most unsavory of characters.

I want to water down Grace, dilute and weaken her -- just enough so I can control her, because she doesn’t know what she’s doing—and clearly she needs start listening to me.

See Grace has this ridiculous idea that she can woo people in by just being her raw, unfiltered, stunning self. She keep trying to tell me that true change comes when people realize how dearly loved they are, just exactly as they are, not as they should be, because they’ll never be as they should be.

She wants to lavish her gifts on people who just honestly don’t deserve her attention.

I want to draw lines around her, put her in boxes, make her easy to understand. I want to make her palatable. But she keeps on being wild, erasing every line and ripping every box.

I’m scared that people are just going to use her as an excuse to never change and keep on making bad decisions... but somehow she doesn’t seem to be concerned about this…at all.

-------------------------------------------

Raw, unfiltered, stunning, beautiful, reckless, and wild Grace….Oh, how sweet she sounds.